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Gotham’s David Mazouz Hints Bruce is Closer to Becoming Batman

Is “Gotham’s” Bruce Wayne getting closer than ever to becoming the Batman he’s fated to be?

In speaking with the press at Wondercon, David Mazouz, who plays the young, not-yet-Dark Knight on the Fox series was more than happy to hint that Bruce will be moving further down the path of becoming a masked vigilante. Along the way, he’ll struggle with both the increasing emergence of the Court of Owls, his enigmatic double, and his deteriorating romance with the young Selina Kyle when the series returns for its final eight episodes of Season 3 on April 24.

How is the Bruce/Selina relationship progressing as we head into the back half of the season?

David Mazouz: It was going good for a while. It hit a rough patch. I think it’s going to take some time to recover from that. Selina is very angry with Bruce, as we saw in one of the last episodes to air. It will take her a while to forgive him.

I think Bruce is going through something very, very big in his personal life right now in these coming episodes. Eventually, I think they will make amends, but it’s going to take a while to get there because what happened was such a big speed bump in their relationship.

He’s taken a lot of steps this season towards becoming the hero that he’s going to become eventually.

Absolutely.

What’s coming in the season that keeps him on that track?

It’s funny, because you’re saying that now, and you haven’t even seen what’s coming! That’s basically what the Bruce arc in these last eight episodes are. It’s him on his journey becoming what he’s about to become.

I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s really guided by his great desire to figure out his destiny, to figure out his greater propose in Gotham. He wants to know who he is, and somebody will come along and tell him. Whether that image of what he could be is really what he’s supposed to be… Basically, he’s going to be guided in a direction that probably isn’t the best – not probably, it isn’t the best route for him, and it’s going to take a lot of inner strength to bounce back.

Between the real Bruce and his identical doppelganger Subject 51A, which persona do you personally relate to the most?

Given that one’s good and one’s bad, I hope that I can relate more to the real Bruce! It’s interesting. He’s not bad. He’s lost. He’s very much a lost soul looking… actually, now that I think about it, similarly to Bruce these last eight episodes, he’s looking for a purpose as well.

Ultimately, he’s looking for love, he’s looking to be cared for, but his most direct goal is to find a purpose, somebody to give him something to do with his life, because he was created in a lab, let out, and where do you go from there? He doesn’t know anybody. He has literally zero relationships. So he sees Bruce, this is somebody who looks identical to him, and he thinks, “That’s it, that’s my calling.”

When Bruce kicks him out — with good reason, but he kicks him out from his life and says, I don’t ever want to see you again — Bruce 2 takes that and ends up in the hands of the Court of Owls. And now, because who he thought was going to be his savior ended up breaking his heart, he’s not going to have any trouble hurting him back.

Of the various versions of Bruce and Batman that you’ve explored while doing your research on the character, was there any previous iteration that left a long-lasting impression on the direction you wanted to take Bruce?

That’s a really good question. I’m trying to think now. I think one of the things that really influenced me in almost every single scene that I did, it was two things that really did this for me: It was the “Batman” series created by Greg Capullo and Scott Snyder in 2011, and also “Batman Begins.” Those two things, Batman shared a quality in both of those where he was very much stoic, and also you never could really tell what he was thinking.

That’s something that I kind of really started to explore, and I felt like it was fitting with what was happening with Bruce in the series. Something I really started to explore towards the middle of Season 2, if you go back, you’ll notice it. He’s much more transparent, simply put, in his facial expressions throughout Season 1 and the first half of Season 2, and then towards the middle of our series so far, he becomes much more stoic. I think that’s the simplest way to put it.

Set in Batman’s home city before the Dark Knight Detective started his nocturnal patrols, “Gotham” stars Ben McKenzie as Detective Jim Gordon, David Mazouz as young Bruce Wayne, Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth, Camren Bicondova as young Selina Kyle, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock, Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot, Cory Michael Smith as Edward Nygma, Morena Baccarin as Leslie Thompkins and Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney.

Currently on hiatus, the show resumes its third season Monday, April 24, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.